Any Man Of Mine (21 page)

“Not today.” He squeezed her shoulders in his big hot hands. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s probably wise.” He laughed, a soft little chuckle that slid up her skull with his thumbs. “Your collar is in the way.”

“I’m not taking my shirt off.”

“Not off. Just maybe two buttons to loosen up your collar.” He pressed his fingers into her knotted shoulder muscles, and her eyes about rolled back into her head. “I get my kinks worked all the time. I’m pretty much a professional.”

Two buttons. She raised her hands and unbuttoned her shirt to the white bow in the middle of her white bra.

His voice got a little deeper, and he said, “Slide your hair to one side.”

With her right hand, she reached behind her and pulled her hair over her right shoulder.

He pushed the back of her collar. “One more. I promise I won’t look.”

She unbuttoned one more, and somehow the top of her blouse was halfway down her shoulders.

“Better?” His hands squeezed her bare shoulders.

“Yes.” Definitely not safer, though. But God, his hands were magic, sliding over her skin and pressing into her taut muscles. The tips of his fingers slid across her collarbone, and his thumbs worked the knots where her neck met her shoulders. Her tension eased, and she relaxed. With each magic squeeze of his warm hands, her guard lowered, and her body heated.

His palms worked outward, pausing to squeeze the balls of her shoulders and slipping down her arms. His hands spanned her ribs on the outside of her blouse, and he pressed his thumbs into her spine. “Are you sure you don’t want to take off your shirt?”

No, she wasn’t sure at all. She wasn’t sure she didn’t want to lean back into him, into his solid chest, and stay there a while. “I’m sure.”

He slid his hands down her sides to her waist then to her hips. She felt his warm breath by her ear. “I like your skirt.”

Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she swallowed hard. “It’s vintage.”

“It’s tight,” he whispered against the sensitive side of her neck. “It makes your ass look good.” His palms slid to her belly and pulled her back against his chest. The curve of her bottom pressed into his groin. “It gives me bad thoughts.” Through the fabric of his pants and her skirt, his erection brushed against her bottom. “Wanna hear a few?”

Yes, she did, but she knew it was a really bad idea. Her voice was weak and not at all convincing when she answered, “No.”

He kissed the side of her throat. “Is this still one of your sweet spots?” The wet press of his hot mouth forced a shudder to work through her relaxed body from the inside out. “Mmm,” he hummed against her skin, adding delicious little shivers and sending her into a sensory overload.

She turned and put her hands on his chest to stop him. Through the thin wool of his sweater, and the hard muscles of his chest, she could feel the beating of his heart, much faster than the slow smooth touch of his hands. “We can’t do this.”

One of his hands moved across her bare shoulder to the side of her face. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.” His lips touched hers, and her breath caught in her throat. “Thinking about you and wondering.”

“What?” Her fingers curled into his sweater.

“Wondering what it is about you that made me lose my mind six years ago.” His lips brushed hers, and hot little shivers tingled her spine. She couldn’t help it. It was involuntary, just like her palms sliding up his chest, over his shoulder. His face was so close, his nose touched hers. She didn’t want him to lose his mind. She didn’t want to lose her mind, either.

“Wondering if being with you would make me lose my mind now.” He slid his palms to her behind and cupped her bottom in his hands. “I wonder if it would be like the first time we had sex.”

She wondered if he even remembered.

He pressed her against him, against the long length of his erection just left of his zipper. “When we were going at it so hard we fell off the bed. So hard we both got rug burns.”

Okay. So he did remember.

He rocked against her pelvis. “Would it be like that again?”

Her breath caught in the top of her lungs, and she moaned a soft, “Yes.” She didn’t know if she meant yes she remembered or wondered or wanted more. Maybe all three. She couldn’t think straight, then he kissed her, and she couldn’t think at all. It started with a gentle press of his lips that she felt in the backs of her knees and the soles of her feet. Her heart pounded, and she opened her mouth beneath his. His tongue touched hers, warm and wet, and he tasted like suppressed aggression, reminding her of something she hadn’t had for a long time. Something she’d forgotten she liked so much.

Hot sex with a hot-blooded man.

Her pounding heart sped up, flooding every part of her body with liquid fire. Her emotions remained detached from the long, slow kiss, but her body was fully engaged. Aching with need. Itching for him to soothe the desire tightening her nipples.

His pectoral muscles bunched as she slid her hands up his chest to his shoulders and rose to the balls of her feet. She pressed the length of her body into his. Against her bare cleavage, she felt every fiber of his wool sweater. Against her pelvis, she felt his rock-hard erection, and she opened her mouth a little wider and devoured him with passionate, feeding, kisses. Undiluted lust twisted her stomach into knots. It had been so long since she’d felt so alive. So burned up inside. So long since the overwhelming urge to touch and be touched. To eat him up, run her mouth all over him. She moved her hands over his shoulders and back, ran her fingers through his cool hair. She wanted him badly. Wanted the hot push and aggressive tug of sex with Sam. The tumble and grind until she exploded and imploded all at the same time.

Just like before.

She pushed back from the insanity and gasped for breath. She couldn’t do this. Not with Sam of all people, and not while her son was in his bedroom coloring pictures.

His hands on her waist tightened, and he pulled her toward him once more.

“No, Sam.”

His hands on her waist tightened, his breathing hard as if he’d just finished an hour of sprint training. “Yes, Autumn.”

“No.” Saying no to Sam wasn’t easy, but being with Sam was impossible. The last time had cost her a huge chunk of her heart and changed her life completely. She swallowed hard and shook her head. “No.”

He looked at her through blue eyes smoldering with lust and determination. She’d seen it before. Years ago. She’d fallen for it then. She was older now. Wiser, too.

“What are you doing, Sam?”

“The same thing you’re doing. Getting really turned on.”

“Conner could walk in here at any second.” But that was only a part of why she’d stopped him.

“I’m sure you have a lock on a door in one of the rooms in this house.”

“That’s tacky.”

“That’s what adults do.”

She took a step back, and her shoulders hit the closed refrigerator door. “Is that what you do in your house? Lock yourself inside a bedroom with one of your girlfriends?”

His jaw tightened, and his gaze turned hard. “I’ve never had a girlfriend anywhere near Conner.”

She pulled up the shoulders of her blouse. It didn’t matter. “Why are you here? Why did you want Conner to invite you to Thanksgiving? Like we’re a family?”

He ran his hands through the sides of his short blond hair, then dropped them to his sides. “I don’t know. Just bored, I guess.”

That’s what she’d thought. “Go find someone else to play with you.” She looked down and buttoned her shirt. “The last time you were bored, I ended up alone and pregnant in a Vegas hotel room.”

Pushes My Buttons

R
ain pelted the windows of Autumn’s rented beach house as the storm pushed the black surging tide up the beach to crash within the long grasses whipping about in the extreme winds. A kitchen light illuminated her from behind as she stood in front of an entire wall of windows in the A-frame house.

Lightning flashed within the black clouds, and white cracks splintered the night sky a second before thunder boomed. She felt it through the hardwood beneath her bare feet.

Upstairs, in one of the two bedrooms, Conner slept, blissfully unaware of Nature’s chaos. He’d passed out about an hour before, after a full day of beachcombing in his rubber boots and raincoat. The weather had been fairly tame until the storm had rolled in three hours ago. Autumn loved a good storm, and this one was proving to be spectacular.

She folded her arms across the thin top of her wiener-dog pajamas. If she hadn’t been alone with only an exhausted five-year-old, it might have been nice to crack open the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon she’d bought to take back to Shiloh. It might be nice to turn up the fire and listen to the thunder as she laid her cheek on a big shoulder and enjoyed a glass of wine with a man.

Yesterday had been tense, from the moment Sam had arrived until the moment he’d left. Beyond the general tension she usually felt near Sam, he and Vince had been at each other’s throats, and both took it to a whole new level.

She hunched her shoulders against the air that chilled her skin and tightened her breasts beneath the T-shirt material. There had been a few brief moments yesterday when her tension had eased. When Sam had smoothed it away with his hands. Then he’d kissed her neck and filled the void with a whole different kind of tension. And in those few moments, when he’d kissed her and she’d kissed him back like she was starving, he’d woken every cell in her body. He’d reminded her that she was thirty. That she wanted to be touched and held. She wanted to be wanted. He’d reminded her that she wanted more at night than the battery-operated boyfriend she had to hide in a box on her closet shelf, away from a snoopy five-year-old. He’d reminded her that dragging a chair to her closet and uncovering her special toy boy, was an empty substitute for a real flesh-and-blood boy toy.

And she wanted a boy toy. A hot, pretty one. Like Sam.

Thunder rolled across the sky and boomed beneath her feet. Lightning flashed like a strobe within the clouds. No. Not Sam. The fact that his name had even entered her head was horrifying. Proof that she needed some skin-on-skin time. That it had been
waaay
too long since she’d rolled around naked in a man’s sheets.

The thunder boomed again, and she waited for the lightning. It didn’t happen. Just a steady boom boom boom until she realized it was the front door. A frown creased her forehead as she moved across the carpeted living room, past the stairs to the entry. The storm wasn’t bad enough for evacuation, and she made sure the chain was latched before she opened the door. She flipped on the lights, and through the crack, Sam stood in the downpour, his hair plastered to his head.

“What are you doing here?” she yelled to him above the sound of the rain.

“I don’t know.”

She closed the door just long enough to unlatch the chain before she opened it again. “There’s a travel advisory.”

Water dripped down his forehead and stuck his eyelashes together, but he didn’t move. He just stood there staring at her like he was lost.

She flipped her watch over and looked at the face. “It’s ten o’clock, Sam.”

Droplets ran down his cheeks as his gaze lowered from her eyes to her mouth. “Is it?”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know why one minute I was sitting at Benihana with Ty and Darby and some of the scouts, and I just got up and left.” The shoulders of his thick hooded sweatshirt were soaked, and his gaze continued lower, down her throat to her cold, hard breasts. “I don’t know why I got in my truck and drove two hours through this god-awful storm.” He looked back up into her eyes. “I don’t know why I’ve been standing outside this house for ten minutes before knocking on the fucking door.”

She wasn’t going to ask why again. He clearly wasn’t making sense. Maybe not playing hockey made him crazy. “Sam, I’m confused.”

“That only seems fair.” He reached for her and grabbed a big handful of her shirt just below her breasts. “You confuse the hell out of me.” He pulled her across the threshold. Outside into the rain.

Cold droplets hit her face and neck. She lifted her face to tell him he was crazy, but his mouth silenced hers. Hot, slick, and demanding. She stood perfectly still while he kissed her, waiting for him to stop. Waiting for her hands to creep up his chest so she could shove him away and slam the door in his face. But the kiss was too hot, too delicious, and he must have slipped her some of his craziness because she rose onto the balls of her feet and kissed him back. Her tongue touched his, swirled and tangled. Heat radiated from his hand and mouth and warmed up places deep in her belly and between her thighs. Cold rain soaked her hair and arms. Thunder boomed, and rain slid past their sealed lips. She slid her fingers into his wet hair and sucked the air from his lungs.

He pulled back first, and the black night cast a shadow across his eyes and nose. Her heart pounded like the chaotic sky, and she fought for breath, sucking in cold air and water and him. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she didn’t need to see him to know that his eyes burned with his desire. It surrounded them both in hot waves. Pressing in and demanding satisfaction. The kind that could only be sated with hot skin against hot skin.

“Come inside, Sam.” She’d felt it once before. Years ago. Big. Forceful. Dominating. Like the man himself.

“Where’s Conner?”

“Asleep.” This was dangerous. A dangerous game she’d lost in the past, but she was older. Wise enough to feed her lust while her heart remained detached.

“You know what I want.”

Yes. She knew. She knew she was probably going to regret it in the morning. But that was hours away, and she wanted to spend those hours satisfying the ache pounding her like the thunder overhead.

She took his hand and pulled him across the threshold. She closed the door behind him and leaned back against it as he reached down his back, grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt, and pulled it over his head. The bottom of the thick shirt lifted from the waistband of a pair of worn Levi’s resting low on his hips. It rose from the five buttons and up the narrow blond line of hair on his flat belly. His happy trail circled his navel, then climbed up the ridges of his abdomen. He wiped his face and dropped the sweatshirt on the floor. Then stood before her in wet jeans and damp skin and his figure-eight splint. He shook his head like a dog, sending droplets everywhere.